Sunday, October 04, 2009

Civic Center, Crossroads of Fun

Humanities West was offering a two-day symposium on "Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler" at the Herbst Theatre that included a lovely noon luncheon on Saturday at Indigo restaurant a block away on McAllister Street.

At the same time, on the nearby corner of McAllister and Franklin, scores of people patiently waited for a Muni bus to Warren Hellman's bluegrass festival out in Golden Gate Park.

Meanwhile, in Civic Center, young people were gathering for a daylong party called "LovEvolution."

The entire Civic Center was fenced off and admission (not "donation") was required to enter the party space.

Charging money to use public space is not a particularly good precedent but in this case it made some sense. The party was for young people from all over the Bay Area, and it required a whole lot of expensive security that needed to be paid.

As is usually true of young, Dionysian scenes, there are plenty of sloppy casualties such as the young woman above who got too wasted too early.

For the rest, it was an amazing open air party that blasted its way up Market Street Saturday afternoon. Much more to come.

Since 2001, I have had big problems with closing off public space and charging people to enter the space. That was the year that I went to the opera with my mother, who was then 80 and recovering from a broken wrist, and had to either pay so we could walk through the damn event or walk around it, which would have been even more trying for her.

Dear Lisa: It did get rather insane around opera and symphony time as the drunk/stoned young stragglers were trying to make their way home or to another dance party while the mostly elderly high culture patrons were making their way to the neighborhood.